


Agents of Kidnap

by Sanctuaria



Series: Celebrating AoS Season 7 (with angst and hurt/comfort) [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Dekesy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, LemonQuake, episode 7x04, is abduction hereditary?, season 7, they didn’t speak in this episode so they are speaking here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24786193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/pseuds/Sanctuaria
Summary: “Simmons has a lot of experience with it,” Daisy says gently. “Ward, the monolith, Ward again, a different monolith… Fitz too.” Her face takes on a faraway look. “He gets kidnapped almost annually, actually.”Deke huffs a laugh. “Maybe it’s genetic.”A candid conversation toward the end of 7x04 between Daisy and Deke regarding kidnapping, the future, and worries about May.
Relationships: Deke Shaw & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Deke Shaw/Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson/Melinda May, could be a precursor to Deke Shaw/Skye | Daisy Johnson if you like
Series: Celebrating AoS Season 7 (with angst and hurt/comfort) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764745
Comments: 23
Kudos: 100
Collections: fill the daisy/deke tag with actual content 2020





	Agents of Kidnap

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so it's 4:30am and I have been writing this since 1am after I finally finished freaking out about the episode. I'm doing it all from memory as there's no way to rewatch the ep as of yet so apologies if anything doesn't quite fit with the timeline of conversations in 7x04. Might come back in the (actual) morning to edit this up a bit, but for now, here you go ;)

“Hey,” a voice says, and Deke looks up from where’s he’s tucked into an out-of-the-way section of the empty lab to see Daisy looking down at him. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course,” he replies, shifting in his seat. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Instead of answering, Daisy just sits down next to him, having changed out of her period-appropriate clothing somewhere along the way now that Agent Sousa is safe and they’re just waiting for the next jump. As good as she looks in the fancy clothes, it occurs to him that he might like her better like this, in a simple green sweater and jeans. Softer. More approachable. More Daisy, rather than Agent Johnson. “Well, you did get kidnapped, so…”

He tries to pass it off with a shrug. “Oh, no big deal. Not my first time.”

The confusion in her brown eyes is clear, followed by a hint of exasperation. “…Getting arrested is _not_ the same as being kidnapped, Deke.”

“Kind of is. They had guns and frogmarched me into a place I didn’t wanna go,” he argues.

Daisy shakes her head, rolling her eyes a little fondly. “It’s not the same.”

“…No. No, it’s not.”

“So…are you okay?”

‘Okay’ is a relative term, Deke thinks. He’s not being stared down by a Kreeper right now or getting pursued by another evil Coulson lookalike or chased by an army of zombies, so who is he to say he’s not? “I mean, I’m not looking forward to it ever happening again, but…I’m all right.” Or he will, be at least. He’s just tired of getting into these situations that make his heart run skittish in his chest, the descending panic that reminds him of watching the Blues take away his mom.

Daisy nods, too smart and emotionally intelligent—that’s a nice, 21st century term—to be at all convinced. “Simmons has a lot of experience with it. Ward, the monolith, Ward again, a different monolith… Fitz too.” Her face takes on a faraway look. “He gets kidnapped almost annually, actually.”

Deke huffs a laugh. “Maybe it’s genetic.”

“Or maybe it’s S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Have you ever…?”

“Oh, yeah.” Daisy looks down. “Ward, that sick son-of-a-bitch. Twice. And then by my mom. Hive.” Her voice shakes slightly, and she takes a deep breath before continuing. “Um, Ghost Rider chained me up once, I don’t know if that counts. And of course to the future…where we met you.”

Her pain pierces him straight in the heart like it always does, though he tries not to look too affected by it. “Looks like I’m in good company, then,” Deke says.

“Technically, Coulson kidnapped me out of my home—well, my van, really—when he first recruited me to S.H.I.E.L.D. Threw a bag over my head and everything.”

“So it’s tradition,” Deke smiles.

Daisy mirrors it. “A rite of passage, really.”

“Does it…does it make it easier?” he asks. “With practice, I mean.”

“Nope.”

“Great.”

“Yeah.”

“I just hate that feeling of oh-god-I’m-gonna-die, you know?” Deke says. “Like, at least if I’m in the Lighthouse about to be blown up to save my friends it’ll be quick. The lack of control, the feeling of helplessness…”

“How did you get away?” Daisy asks. “Mack didn’t say.”

“Talked my way out,” Deke shrugs. “It’s a good thing I’m slippery, I guess.”

“After the Kree, a few HYDRA mobsters must be nothing,” she jokes.

“Told him I was a toaster salesman.”

“Toasters,” Daisy repeats, trying and failing to keep a straight face.

“It was the only thing I could think of that I was pretty sure existed back in the fifties.”

She tilts her head. “You know what, that’s fair.”

“…And I, uh, didn’t kill him. Back in 1931.”

He’s avoiding her eyes, but he can still see it when her face immediately falls. “I am sorry about that, Deke,” she tells him again. “I still believe that maybe it was the right thing to do, but…I never should have put that on you.”

He nods. “I understand it a little better now, you know? It’s like…I didn’t fight HYDRA with you guys, so it was hard for me to understand until I saw Malick murder a man right in front of me, like it was nothing. And if we can change things…maybe we should.” He pauses. “Sorry, did you say you lived in a van?”

Daisy looks away. “Age eighteen to twenty-three.”

“So you weren’t always as cool as you are now,” Deke teases. “ _Quake_.”

“Says the guy who sprayed orange-scented aerosol into his mouth,” she huffs. The smile falls from her face quickly, though, and his own disquiet practically vanishes as he takes in hers.

He bumps her shoulder with his. “What about you? How are you doing with…everything?”

If possible, her expression darkens even more, and Daisy’s lips purse. For a moment, Deke’s afraid he’s done the wrong thing—maybe she doesn’t want to talk about it, or maybe she just doesn’t want to talk about it with _him_ —

“I’m…worried about May,” she admits. “I know Simmons has some explanations and a diagnosis and everything now, but I just can’t help thinking she’ll never be the same. She was…cold, when I first met her, but this—this is a whole new level.”

“Nana will figure it out,” Deke tries to reassure her. “She’s good at that sort of thing.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Daisy asks. “Some things we don’t get to fix. Not all the way. Fitz’s brain trauma. Yo-Yo’s arms. How our experiences…change us. If this is one of those things, I can’t imagine her going through the rest of her life feeling nothing, or only on the whims of other people. That’s her entire personality, her personhood, erased. She can’t laugh on her own terms, or feel sad, or… She can’t _love_.”

“She can,” Deke says hurriedly, “if the other person loves her back, she can; it won’t be the same but it—”

“She can’t love Coulson,” Daisy whispers.

“Oh,” Deke says, and looks down.

She’s silent for a moment, lines of misery that he wishes he could just wipe away written all over her face, except he can’t really see a way out of this either. Then Daisy wipes her eyes on her sweater-sleeve. “Sorry, I was supposed to be comforting you. I, uh—”

“No,” he tells her. “This is good. We comfort each other, okay?” He forces his lips into some approximation of a smile. “Bad things happen at S.H.I.E.L.D. way too fast for one-sided comforting to be sustainable.”

“That is…unfortunately true.” She shifts closer to him slightly, her head dropping to one side to rest lightly on his shoulder. Deke goes absolutely still immediately, every muscle in his body tense, but he thanks the universe that she doesn’t seem to notice, or at least, doesn’t care enough to lift her head. “I’m glad Malick didn’t kill you today.”

“Me too.”

They’re quiet for a minute, maybe two. “I should go help Simmons prep for the jump,” Daisy says finally, shifting away from him and moving to stand.

“Wait,” Deke says, and she glances back at him, curiosity and perhaps a bit of fear in her eyes, fear that maybe this time he’s finally going to ask for more than she’s willing to give. But he’s not, though, and he never will be. Even if he can’t always help how he feels about her, that’s his problem, not hers.

Deke reaches into his pocket and pulls out a rounded yellow fruit. “I picked this up for you. We were running out, so…”

“A lemon.”

“I mean,” Deke jokes nervously, “it’d be weirder at this point if it was a grapefruit or something, right?”

“You got kidnapped, escaped, called Enoch from a 1950s telephone booth, and then came back to the Zephyr and stole me a lemon along the way.”

“Hey! Why do you assume I stole it?” he complains.

Daisy raises an eyebrow. “Did you?”

“…Borrowed…?” he tries. “Okay, _stole_. It was just sitting there outside this supermarket thing, and I was in a hurry, obviously, and Lighthouse habits die hard, okay? Plus when I was a tech CEO we all just paid for things wirelessly on our phones, so…”

Daisy sighs and takes it from him anyway. “You still haven’t told me the significance of these, you know.”

A brief flash of panic consumes him, but he swallows it down. Act cool, Deke. Act cool. “Heh, who’s to say how the weird customs of the Lighthouse eighty years in the future came about…”

“Mack knows,” Daisy mutters. “So does Coulson. God, I think even _Piper_ knows…”

Deke gulps. “Are you gonna ask them?”

“…It’s probably better if I don’t.” She stands, then turns to him and offers him her hand. “Come on, I think there’s still some sugar in one of the back cabinets of the kitchen. This’ll make, like, half a glass of lemonade each and stave off the scurvy from being on this ship too long.”

He takes her hand, scrambling upwards. “Wait, scurvy? Is that an actual thing we can get? Like with teeth falling out and—”

“Yes?” Daisy shrugs. “…I don’t know, we should probably ask Simmons.”

“Ask me what?” the scientist in question says, walking into the lab. Before anyone can say anything else, the Zephyr’s operating systems explode into alarms, a countdown with less than two minutes to their next jump appearing on the screen. Daisy and Simmons both spring into action, the lemon dropped on the holotable’s white surface and forgotten.

Deke isn’t though. Daisy smiles at him before heading for mission control—a little wistful and a little sad, but a smile all the same. “Here we go again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, toasters were invented in 1893. I checked. 
> 
> Any and all feedback appreciated! At this rate, I will see you all next week, if not before lmao. Until then!


End file.
